Food Guilt

After pressing publish on my last post there is only one thing that has been on my mind.I try to avoid too much detail about what I refer to as “the dark ages” because…well, for a lot of reasons. I prefer to talk about where I am now, you never know who reads the blog, I’d rather talk about rainbows and sunshine 🙂 But I feel like this is a topic that a lot of people struggle with and I always try to keep things honest.

For me, eating a donut is hard. Don’t get me wrong, the actual eating, I love or I wouldn’t do it, I have a HUGE sweet tooth and I learned that completely cutting things out of my diet leads nowhere good. If I legitimately don’t want a dessert, I won’t eat one, but today I did and it tasted amazing and in the moment I didn’t worry about what anyone else was thinking about my food choices or what the scale would say tomorrow. I took my time, was cautious about my portion and enjoyed my freaking donut tastes. In fact, it wasn’t until after I posted about it that my mind started running around like a psycho.

“I can’t believe you just told the world you ate a donut.”

“Everyone is going to be judging you.”

“You’re going to get fat…er”

“You have lost control.”

Then, like an idiot, I went and weighed myself to see how much weight I had gained today since I ate the donut. Yes, I am aware that this is crazy. To prove it, the scale played mind games and showed a lower number than it did this morning. Apparently, donuts make you lose weight. Hah. Not.

I let my mind do it’s crazy thing for a little bit before forcing myself to take a shower, make a healthy lunch that my brain had been trying to convince me I was not hungry for and did not need to be eating, and get honest about one of my biggest food challenges. I experience food guilt almost every time I eat a dessert, almost any time I eat later at night (even if my last meal was at 4 and I worked until 9), and sometimes after a perfectly healthy meal just because I feel full and it scares me.

Blogging about food and the fear of judgement from others and not being “thin enough” to have any right to talk about healthy living sometimes amplifies that fear, but more often than not it is a healthy outlet for me. Every single healthy living blog I read, the blogger is not a perfect eater–there is no such thing. I’ve read about other bloggers eating donuts and ice cream and french fries. And I don’t judge them. I appreciate that they, like me, are not perfect and that they are human and that part of healthy balance includes indulgences.

Thanks for listening to my crazy rambles. Hopefully now you don’t think I’m a total psycho haha. If you do, well…you’re probably right on some level 😉